The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

The big story in Asia IMO is the smaller powers trying to integrate
with the PRC economically while keeping it at arms’ length militarily, but that
doesn’t seem to drive the coverage I see.Perhaps as a function of that “salary depends on not understanding” Mark
Twain crack, US diplos/generals/journos/wonks seem determined to ignore the centripetal
forces at play in Asia with China at their heart.

There’s also a gigantic blind spot in US coverage of the
Philippines.If you read the papes,
everybody in the Philippines is staring anxiously out at the South China Sea
for “Chizilla” to emerge and wreak havoc on a jewel of Pacific democracy.

Actually, if you read my piece, you’ll find
that the forces ravaging the Philippines are poverty, inequality, social
division, corruption, and the occasional megatyphoon and I have an idea the
reason that Fidel Ramos championed Duterte is because he saw him as the one
candidate who would focus on domestic issues and not pivot-friendly bullsh*t.

The US story is that the threat of “China rising” must be
contained militarily, its economic reach reduced, and Asia should look for a “high
standards” trade bloc, TPP, for its growth story instead of canoodling with the
Chicoms.

However, I think the CCP read its George Kennan and realized
the containment strategy worked on the USSR because the Soviets thought,
incorrectly, they could cut it as an autarky.Deng knew different, enabled inward and outward investment, and now we’re
looking at not only Asia but much of the world anxious at how Chinese trouble
will play out in their own economies.

In my opinion, the US was only able to establish “China
threat” as the top element on the Asian FP agenda temporarily, with
considerable effort, and only by the active support of pro-US government
officials in Japan and the Philippines who were willing to assist in
engineering polarizing provocations with the PRC around the Senkakus and
Scarborough Shoal.

Now the economic logic of Asian integration i.e. hoovering
up the cash the PRC is willing to throw at the region is reasserting itself.

Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and now the
Philippines are showing via engagement with China that their participation in
any US crusade is conditional and equivocal.

These countries are not democratic and human rights garden
spots, so I guess the US could summon up some “birds of a feather” grumbling
about why the jefes of these regimes are willing to cozy up to dictators
instead of joining the crusade to contain, isolate, and degrade the PRC regime (and
heroically put their own economic well-being at risk at the same time).

And then there’s this guy:

That’s Shinzo Abe making nice with Rodrigo Duterte during
Duterte’s recent visit to Japan. Actually, making the "iron fist", the symbol of Duterte's, shall we say, rather harsh vision of how to make Philippine democracy do the right thing "or I'll punch the crap outta you. Or worse."

I just love this picture.I don’t recall seeing it in US coverage of Duterte’s foray into Japan.

US tunnel vision was in full force again, focused on the
fact that Duterte said he wanted foreign militaries a.k.a. the US outta the
Philippines in two years.

But the big story was, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, “the
dog that didn’t snarl.” Japan.

Abe reciprocated Duterte’s outreached fist, one might say,
with his own, and competed with the PRC in offering various goodies to the
Philippines.

Abe’s Japan, as I comment in my Asia Times piece, has a
rather multi-jointed agenda.

Japan was in a pretty solid space, securitywise, if it was content to remain a security ward of the United States under the pacifist constitution. But ideology, opportunity, and necessity are driving Japan back into Asia as a security actor.

Abe, a
revisionist nationalist (i.e. he rejects the victor’s justice narrative of
World War II that Japan did wrong and deserved to be militarily neutered), is
piggybacking on the pivot to enable Japan’s re-emergence as a full-fledged
Asian power with an extensive network of relationships cum allies in East and South Asia.

China’s rise is an indispensable element in Japan’s rise.

The, let’s face it, hulking
and goonish face of PRC regional engagement promotes a search for capable friends,
and most Asian countries are pretty happy to have Japan in their corner—and not
too upset about Japan’s return to the fray as a full-fledged military
power.

Second, after the United States
signed on to the “China threat” narrative as the driver for its Asia pivot
(something that Kurt Campbell, Hillary Clinton, and Seiji Maehara cahooted on
in 2010), the US abandoned the honest broker position it had claimed in
previous decades and lined up behind Japan and provided material, operational, and diplomatic support for the expansion of Japan's military footprint in Asia.

However, I believe that Japanese strategists regard US
anti-China resolve as a wasting asset, not just subject to the vagaries of
American politics and conflicting economic/fiscal/trade priorities that
undercut the containment strategy, but also because the ineluctable logic of
Asian growth is sidelining the US as hegemon of the anti-China alliance.

There is likely to come a day when the US faces its Suez moment and admits it’s not ready to fight a war in the west Pacific to protect
US interests and sustain US prestige.

That day is unlikely to come under the Clinton administration—which has
preemptively committed itself to a policy of sustaining US global pre-eminence through
the application of military force as needed—and that, depending on your appetite for
combat with the Chicoms 8000 miles from home, is either a good or bad thing.

But the day will probably come and if and when it does,
Japan does not want to be standing there helplessly holding its daikon (as it did when Nixon went to
China).Instead, it’s going to be
militarily strong, probably with a Israel-style covert nuclear weapons capability it
will discretely brandish, and with a strong regional network of friends and
allies in East Asia.

I think a Japan-centric security regime facing China but
complemented by regional economic integration is sustainable; I think a
US-centric system based on forestalling economic integration and keeping allies
submissive by maintaining a nuclear “umbrella” a.k.a. monopoly is not.

We may de facto be
heading towards such a regime, even as the Clinton administration continues its
hypernationalist bluster.There’s the
nibbling away at the pivot by the smaller and weaker allies, there’s Abe with
Duterte and, if I’m reading Paul Krugman’s tea leaves correctly, it appears
that President Clinton may give up on TPP as an Obama pipe dream.

Not to say peace and reduced tensions are in the offing for East Asia; particularly, if I was
Duterte I’d watch my back as the Clinton administration will probably seek to
punish his lese majeste toward the United States much more than the lame-duck
Obama administration.And, I imagine the
U.S. Navy will demand more of its precious FONOPs in order to provoke the Chinese,
hopefully to the point of a confrontation that feeds the security polarization
narrative and fattens its budget.

But the general trend seems to be away from Hillary Clinton’s
goal of “America’s Pacific Century” toward “The Pacific’s Pacific Century” and
I think that’s a pretty good thing.